Marathon Infinity - Sysnopses of Timelines

[BlackMageAnolis]

So I was looking at the different timeline charts for Marathon Infinity on the story page, and even though they do a good job showing the mission-to-mission flow of the game(s), they neglect to really delve into the different events in each timeline. So I decided to make a timeline chart of my own, this time focused explicitly on the events of each timeline and where I believe they branch off one another as opposed to the player's flow through the timelines. If you have any questions about interpretations and whatnot, ask away!

[General-RADIX]

Looks pretty good/straightforward to me!

Guess my main comment would be that I don't think it's 100% clear how/under what circumstances Durandal grabbed the SO; demo versions explicitly say that he teleported them directly into a stasis chamber, but the final doesn't mention this.

[Pfhorrest]

I also thought this looked pretty good, though it took me a little bit to figure out how to read it.

In the end it seems pretty similar to my own latest timeline chart, although I stand by my choice to display the left-hand side of it flipped horizontally compared to yours, because Marathon 2 is the most unlike any of the right-hand-side timelines, with Rage 1 being slightly less dissimilar, Ne Cede Malis even less, and mostly the manual prologue not being clear whether it's a part of the Durandal-takes-SO group of timelines or the Durandal-leaves-SO group at all.

But with the way you display the text to the right of the timeline-lines, I'm not sure arranging it that way would really be feasible for this chart.

[BlackMageAnolis]

Looks pretty good/straightforward to me!

Guess my main comment would be that I don't think it's 100% clear how/under what circumstances Durandal grabbed the SO; demo versions explicitly say that he teleported them directly into a stasis chamber, but the final doesn't mention this.

Well, my blurb is somewhat ambiguously worded in that regard, but I say with a lack of information from the game itself as to what truly happened to the SO, I'm inclined to believe the demo's version of events were the most likely to have occurred.

I also thought this looked pretty good, though it took me a little bit to figure out how to read it.

In the end it seems pretty similar to my own latest timeline chart, although I stand by my choice to display the left-hand side of it flipped horizontally compared to yours, because Marathon 2 is the most unlike any of the right-hand-side timelines, with Rage 1 being slightly less dissimilar, Ne Cede Malis even less, and mostly the manual prologue not being clear whether it's a part of the Durandal-takes-SO group of timelines or the Durandal-leaves-SO group at all.

But with the way you display the text to the right of the timeline-lines, I'm not sure arranging it that way would really be feasible for this chart.

The idea was the have the Marathon 2 timeline as a anchor for the others, since I would assume that was the "prime" timeline before the events of Infinity occurred. The Durandal-dominated/themed timelines went on the left, and the Tycho one(s) went on the right, and you'd end, as on most pages of a book, at the bottom-right corner with the end of Envy.

I stuck the manual timeline in the Durandal-leaves-SO group but kept it separate from the Tycho timelines because the manual fails to mention Tycho or the SO at all, who are both pretty key players in the plot here, so I figured it was a reasonable assumption to make that they probably weren't there for everything that went down, Tycho and the SO probably busy somewhere else while Tfear took care of Durandal.

I dunno, it's kind of a leap, but that was a detail that leapt out at me when I read over it again, and I didn't really want it to be just another version of the Ne Cede Malis timeline, so I figured, "yea, maybe the SO wasn't kidnapped here", but I dunno. Apparently, there was a case made by another fellow chart-maker that the manual timeline could be an extension of Rage 1's events, though it didn't quite gel with me after looking further into it. It's an edge case, and the timeline's already a weird one to wrestle with as is, as inconsequential as it may be at the end of things.

Now, when you mention your latest chart, are you referring to your most recent one on the Story Page, or was there another one you made between then and now?

[Pfhorrest]

I'm pretty sure the Story Page has my latest version on it, yeah.

Your rationales make sense too, though.

Sorry I'm terse, it's the middle of the night and I should sleep.

[BlackMageAnolis]

Nah, it’s okay! (I say in the morning.)

[xanderdavis]

Thank you for making this chart. I was working on my own treatment of the Marathon Infinity story to untangle it and (finally?) understand it, since I hadn't found anything that quite vividly and succinctly summarized it all until now. This has saved me an enormous amount of time.

Pfhorrest, I can't seem to find your version of a chart on the Story page. Got a link?

[Pfhorrest]

Pfhorrest, I can't seem to find your version of a chart on the Story page. Got a link?

It's at the bottom of http://marathon.bungie.org/story/dream.html, or a direct link at http://marathon.bungie.org/story/_image ... gram-2.png, or embedded below:

[xanderdavis]

Wowzers-- awesome!

Thanks